In Douglas Adams’ novel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, the author notes that “in no known language does the phrase ‘As lovely as an airport’ appear.” But there is a case to be made for Lambert’s original design.

When the main terminal was completed in 1956, it instantly became what architectural historian Michael Allen now calls “a landmark that really set the standard.” The terminals at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, D.C.’s Dulles International Airport, and Paris’ Charles De Gaulle Airport—all built in a sweeping midcentury style—are said to have been inspired by Lambert’s elegant lines.

Architect Minoru Yamasaki—who later became the chief architect of New York’s World Trade Center—designed the terminal, “his first real commission in front of the eyes of thousands of people,” Allen says. Until Yamasaki’s design, airport terminals were “flat-roofed little boxes,” Allen says, no more than utilitarian holding pens for passengers. But Lambert’s terminal captured the glamour of jet travel during that era, with its aerodynamic lines and a series of low-slung arches that celebrate the idea of flight. The space inside, a cavernous assembly hall with vaulted ceilings, echoes the look of railroad terminals like New York’s Grand Central Station. “Lambert was pivotal in changing the visual vocabulary of airports,” Allen says.

But as Lambert grew busier, ad hoc additions eroded its elegance. The original terminal building had three vaulted sections, each 120 feet square, but 32 feet tall. An identical fourth section, architecturally in keeping with the rest, was added to the east in 1965. The real aesthetic problem was inside: The clean lines and sense of spaciousness that Yamasaki toiled to create became cluttered by a chaotic jumble of ticket counters, baggage checks, and food outlets. Fortunately, in recent years, renovations have followed Yamasaki’s original intent.

“The terminal remains as an enduring symbol of the city,” Allen says.

“The building itself remains a triumph,” says former Post-Dispatch architecture critic Robert Duffy, who’s now with St. Louis Public Radio. “It continues to be a fresh, modernist, and original celebration of aviation.”

WHAT'S IN A NAME

in 1920, Albert Bond Lambert and the Missouri Aeronautical Society opened St. Louis Flying Field in North County. Lambert paid for the airfield’s development, and when the initial lease ran out, he purchased the land for $68,000.

An airmail service was developed between here and Chicago, with Charles Lindbergh as the chief pilot. By 1928, the city recognized a need to have its own municipal airport. It issued $2 million in bonds to pay for the infrastructure and bought out Lambert, creating one of the nation’s first municipal airports. At the time,St. Louis was considered “among the most air-minded in the country,” writes author James J. Horgan.

Lambert remained involved in the airport until his death, in 1946. His obituary in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch described him as a “Machine Age Pioneer who lived to see his frontier, as it were, built up and thickly settled as he had prophesied it would be.” At the time of his death, Lambert was advocating for the airport’s expansion and modernization—a goal that continues to this day.